gksu nautilus will not display icons correctly or at all

[Dale Beaudoin]

nautulus 3.5.3 will not display icons when using gksu nautilus in terminal

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2014450

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: nautilus 1:3.5.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-2.2-generic 3.5.0-rc4
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-2-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.2.5-0ubuntu1
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jul 2 04:50:02 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Beta i386 (20110901)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, nautilus is not meant to be used under gksu

[philinux (philcb)]

Is this just an ubuntu policy. Since Debian still have this package and using gksu nautilus has been accepted as normal for years. http://packages.debian.org/de/sid/nautilus-gksu

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

no, it's just that running gtk softwares under su,sudo is not supported and bound to have issue, you got lucky it worked so far

[philinux (philcb)]

Ah. No disrespect intended but we've all been lucky for 5 years or more without issue. Is this a gnome 3 gtk3 problem. Could you explain what would happen of we got unlucky. Thanks.

Also what is the alternative to gksu nautilus.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

no I can't explain, out of the fact that dbus is used in an increasing way by GTK,GNOME and that things running under gksu don't have access to your user bus. Upstream also reply to bugs about "running nautilus under sudo" with "don't do that" which I'm just relying here

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the alternative ... if you regularly need to handle files out of user dir maybe create an admin account having the right to do that, log properly into a session for that user which will have a proper setup and dbus bus and then use nautilus

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[philinux (philcb)]

Sabastien, many thanks for explaining. What about the live cd case where its use is invaluable.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

not sure I understand, I never had to use nautilus under gksu nor know anyone who did, you clearly seem to like doing that and it can be useful at time but that's not a common workflow, nor something working on the liveCD (nautilus-gksu is not installed there) out of the box

[philinux (philcb)]

File recovery is one use. http://askubuntu.com/questions/78691/recovering-user-files-with-a-live-cd

But if you google gksu nautilus live cd you will see the scale of it. There are masses of tutorials that recommend its use. I just assumed all these years that it was normal work flow.

[Harry (harry33)]

I am of the same opinion with philinux regarding "gksu nautilus".
Also, I very often "clean" folders and files or edit them with gksu nautilus and then with gedit.
Believe me, it is a useuful command.
Anyway we need an explanation why this is not working anymore.
Downgrading to the version 3.5.2 solves this issue anyway for now.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that discussion is being sidetracked:

- that was no broken on purpose
- that was not broken by Ubuntu but like by upstream changes
- we have no nautilus hackers on launchpad
- upstream doesn't support the gksu use

what is needed is not an explanation is to find a nautilus hacker or contributor who cares about that usecase to figure what change broke it and to see if that's something fixable easily, or if the dbus usage increase just leads to extra issues over time compared to what happened before (like the gvfs backends never really worked under sudo)

[Dale Beaudoin (twocamels)]

Nautilus is completly dysfuntional , gksu or no gksu. From the Unity desktop, it will appear and then suddenly disappear and then lock up on Home directory.

[Cavsfan (cavsfan)]

In terminal entering "sudo -s", entering password and then "nautilus" is the work around I have read.
It also does not give any errors like "gksu nautilus" does.

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

What happens if you use gksudo instead of gksu? (Officially, there is no difference between gksu and gksudo, but in fact there is a subtle difference.)

Also, if you use sudo, you should use -H, as:
sudo -H nautilus